The global atmospheric CO2 concentration has recently (May 2015) passed the 400-ppm threshold for the first time on the NOAA record.1 CO2, a greenhouse gas, causes concerns about climate change and rising sea levels as its concentration escalates.2 Among the options to transition from fossil fuel to more sustainable alternatives, solar fuel generated from CO2 reduction is promising. Thus, effective CO2 reduction is an important goal for the catalysis community.3 Most CO2 reduction products, such as methanol, formic acid, CO, etc., are useful C1 feedstocks in chemical synthesis; among them methanol has the highest volume energy density (and stored hydrogen density) at room temperature and is thus an outstanding product.4 However, it is also a challenging target, because CO2 is thermodynamically robust, so its activation requires a strong thermodynamic driving force.5 Also, selective reduction of CO2 is problematic; some known catalytic CO2 reduction systems afford a mixture of products.6 Regarding synthetic routes to methanol from CO2, direct hydrogenation (with H2) has been observed with a few ruthenium catalysts; these catalytic systems adopt forcing conditions or a multiple catalyst cascade and they have limited longevity.7 Excellent and efficient non-renewable routes to methanol via syn gas are possible,3′ 4 but room remains for improvement in renewable CO2 to methanol conversion. Certain silanes or boranes can affect CO2 reduction under much milder conditions.8 For example, in FIG. 1 known, selective catalytic systems for CO2 to methoxide reduction under low temperatures and pressures is shown. More recently, an example appeared wherein BH3-THF reduces CO2 to methoxide with NaBH4 as the catalyst.9 Although the catalysts in these systems are dramatically different, these low temperature CO2 reductions have a common feature: they rely on silanes and boranes as reductants. The inexpensive and more easily handled NaBH4 was only sparsely investigated for CO2 reduction in the last century.10 In 2015, Cummins and co-workers showed for the first time that CO2 is reduced by NaBH4 to triformatoborohydride, HB(OCHO)3− in anhydrous acetonitrile.11 
Accordingly, there is a need for improved inexpensive methods for converting CO2 to methanol.